Satisfaction. We all long for it. To be satisfied is to have your desires fully gratified or filled up to the max. We all want this but often find it allusive. More often we seek to be satisfied in all the wrong places and go from one thing to the next seeking what our hearts yearn for. Money, power, entertainment, and sex (and all the offshoots of each) hold out for us promises of joy and fulfillment, but always leave us wanting. Can we come to experience true and lasting satisfaction or is it?

The biblical authors speak often about being satisfied.

Moses, the man of God teaches us to pray for it:

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. ~Psalm 90:14

The eminent Psalmist, King David shows us how a heart that pants after God can truly find satisfaction:

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. ~ Psalm 63:3-5

God reproves those who would settle for less than what truly satisfies:

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? ~ Isaiah 55:2

One thing is clear: you were made for more. You were made for God – to know him and enjoy him forever.

John 6 is the longest New Testament chapter, filled with many massive themes, but one that weaves its way through the entire chapter is Jesus as the great Satisfier! Many Christians know this at an intellectual level but miss it entirely at the level of our human experience. So how can this become part of our experience so that we too can say like King David, “My soul is satisfied as with rich food”?

Well Jesus offers himself to you as the bread of life. He said, “whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believers in me shall never thirst.” That’s a big claim. Can he come through? Can he deliver? Of course he can, but only if we come to him as the bread of life. And only if we come on his terms.

So first we must come to him not as one who merely gives bread. Jesus is bread - the bread of life. He himself satisfies! But what do you do with really delicious bread? You don’t settle for smells. You eat it

"Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life" ~ John 6:54

"Whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me" ~ John 6:57

Jesus is not baiting us into some sort of cannibalistic vampire ritual. He is saying we must come to him in total faith in who he claims to be and what he has done. He is the bread of life – there is no fullness of life apart from him! He has eternal life in himself and he offers it to us.  Furthermore, the flesh of his body was broken and torn for us! His blood was poured out in order to bring us back to God, for whom we were made.  Jesus came from heaven in order to bring us home to our Father.

When the vast crowds began a mass exodus from Jesus because his teaching was hard, he asked his disciples if they too were ready to walk away. Peter’s answer is classic:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” ~ John 6:68-69

There is nowhere else to go!  Stop laboring for and pursuing things that don't satisfy. Come to Jesus. Come freely and come now. Come and receive all that he is and all that he has done on your behalf.  Come and be satisfied with true bread from heaven. Come and be fully satisfied forever in Jesus.